


Seven Months, Fourteen Days, Six Hours

by ProfessorDrarry



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-22
Updated: 2020-04-24
Packaged: 2020-05-16 06:47:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 18,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19312822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProfessorDrarry/pseuds/ProfessorDrarry
Summary: Here, in their home office, Draco still seems close. So close. The parchment, the books. The lingering smell. The mysterious desk drawer with its many secrets.





	1. Chapter 1

Seven months. Fourteen days. Six hours. Seventeen minutes.

Harry believed that, at some point, he’d stop being aware of how much time it had been. That being said, upon waking up for the two hundred and twenty-sixth time since an Auror had stood at his door and told him Draco Malfoy was dead, he knew it wasn’t going to be today.

It was a Saturday—for the record if for no other reason. It hardly mattered to him what day it was. He had no alarms, nowhere to be, no reason to be awake at seven seventeen. He still wasn’t back to work, technically because he wasn’t due back at the school for two more weeks. Less technically, it was because he wasn’t going back.

He’d told McGonagall at the funeral that he needed a leave. He’d left out how long the leave might be. He’d finally spat the words onto her shoulder as she gave him a rare hug. He’d been unable to send the letter he’d written three days earlier because it was going to make everything real. When she’d stood in front of him, however, in black robes but wearing a bright purple cape that Draco would have loved, he’d found the words he needed to speak. She’d offered to have him come live at the school even if he decided not to teach at all. He’d refused.

For as long as it belonged to him, this house was going to be his prison. He’d earned it. He wasn’t _exactly_ sure how, but he knew he had. He’d stay here until someone dragged him out. There was nothing left outside these walls, so it seemed fitting to remain trapped by them.

The kettle was new. He’d had to throw out the red one the week before; not because it was broken, but because he’d grown tired of it causing him to break.

_Start thinking of things you want to keep and things we can get rid of. That god awful red kettle, for example._

_I love that kettle. Hermione bought it for me when I got the position._

_Lovely. It can go live at school then._

_The red kettle stays._

The very sensible silver kettle that sat on his hob now was boring and whistle-less and made perfectly serviceable tea. It had the added benefit of not making him curl into a catatonic ball for several hours as soon as the water boiled.

Harry had to finish today. He knew he had to. Hermione and Ginny would be there early Sunday morning to take the bags. Because he’d _asked_ them to. Because this whole thing was getting ridiculous. He’d already done all the hard parts, for Merlin’s sake; he’d closed accounts and informed distant relatives, cleaned out the wardrobe, sent the clothes to the Oxfam shop. This shouldn’t be the part that was tripping him up.

He carried the mug of tea the kettle produced with him, ignoring the growl in his stomach in favour of getting started. Breakfast would just end up in a waste bin. There was no point in wasting time. He stood in front of the door for so long that the redwood started to form swirling patterns. The tea might have grown cold had this not been the mug that Draco had charmed to stay warm for five hours once heated. Finally, he told himself out loud how ridiculous he was being and pushed open the door.

The smell is what hit him first.

 _An office? You want a_ home office _. Why in all hell’s name would I agree to that? I’ll never see you._

_That’s not true. I only bring cases home at weekends. And only when they’re urgent. Come on, Harry. You don’t use the room anyway. It’s just shoved full of boxes of old newspapers._

_Those are Hermione’s._

_You are not winning this argument for yourself, you know._

He’d been trying for months but he hadn’t put his finger on the smell. It was a combination of Ministry parchment, old leather binding, lavender mint tea, and something else. An underlying _Draco-ness_ that might have been lemon if you turned the right way, but was probably more like cedar or ash or smoke. Fresh and suffocating at the same time. Frightening and comforting. Like a thunderstorm.

“God, Potter,” he muttered into the room, putting his tea on the top of a low bookshelf. “Like a thunderstorm? Fuck, you need to get this done. You’re going mad.”

The boxes were piled in the centre of the room, where they’d been since they’d been delivered by the moving company. There were no case files, which was comforting. They’d been picked up by a young, blonde witch with a natural air of authority who would have been Harry’s type in a former lifetime.

He consulted the list on the wall, the one that Hermione had affixed there. It was identical to the ones she’d put in all the other rooms. Organisation and a plan of action. He was already closer to actually getting this done that he had been the past five times. The first three, he’d frozen at the smell. The last two, he’d gotten stuck halfway through taping up the boxes because the old grandfather clock in the corner had chimed. He’d since sent Ron in to charm the clock motionless until Lucius could come to pick it up.

He took a deep breath and consulted the list;

_Desk - decide if there is anything personal you want to keep first. Then, start putting papers into one box and office stuff in another. Don’t worry about sorting or throwing things out. Ginny and I will do that._

He nodded into the emptiness and began.

The large desk was dark wood; Harry didn’t actually remember what _kind_ of dark wood, except that it had been exorbitantly expensive, custom built, and had come out of a conversation about its design and construction which had bored Harry so much that he’d accidentally created small whirlpools at the feet of the designer, earning him a stern glare from Draco and banishment from the room.

The surface was very tidy. That wasn’t surprising. Draco’s workspace was always meticulous, even at the Ministry, where new files were hitting his Unspeakables office every other minute. There was a clear file system, and anyone who chose not to follow it earned the wrath of the pernickety Lifelong Slytherin.

The system did not extend to the rest of the house. Draco’s shoes would end up in every corner of his closet, waking Harry with his curses as he tried to find a matching pair every morning. Their spices were haphazardly thrown on a shelf in the cupboard, and no matter how hard Harry tried to create a clear array, they’d end up muddled, cinnamon beside oregano. Harry loved the messy side of Draco most. No one ever got to see it.

No one ever saw it.

He pulled the paperweight Hugo had made from it’s revered spot and packed it into his small box of ‘keep’ items. Refusing to delay and consider closer, he reached beneath the hidden ledge under the top drawer and retrieved the key. For no reason he could discern, he decided to start with the bottom drawer.

_False bottoms to drawers? What on earth do you need those for?_

_I don’t know. It’s just standard wizarding practice._

_What are you trying to hide?_

_Nothing from you, idiot. That is why I am_ telling _you they exist. I’ll put you into the Wards when it gets here._

_You’re going to Ward the false bottoms of your home office desk? Seriously. Who the hell did I marry?_

The bottom drawer’s false bottom was always the hardest to release from it’s nest. It was built a bit too tight. Harry had only ever opened it once before, but Draco whined about it frequently. Harry had always teased him that maybe if he kept fewer secrets, the drawer wouldn’t annoy him quite so much.

When he finally got it open, he found a large, brown legal envelope that he lifted out and automatically placed in a box that was to his right, in the ‘Hermione and Ginny’ pile. He reached beneath it and found that whatever the envelope had been sitting on was stuck. Solidly stuck. And dark. Almost imperceptible in the darkness of the drawer. Puzzled, he tried prying at the edges for a moment. There were sides to the object. It seemed to be some sort of shoebox-sized box, with a shallow lid and no handles. Changing tactics, he tried prying the top off the box.

He was promptly leaping back in pain as sharp, blue flames lapped at his skin. Swearing, he drew his wand and tried casting a variety of spells on the box. Detection, anti-dark magic, release; he tried everything that wouldn’t destroy the box, but the blue flames remained.

“What the actual _fuck_ , Draco?” he asked the room, scrubbing his hair. His hands had no marks, but the pain of the flames lingered mentally, like some sort of invisible curse.

Glancing down, he made a split second decision and picked the envelope back up.

_To be opened by Harry James Potter only upon the event of the death of Draco Abraxas Malfoy. All others, be warned._

Simple. Direct. Threatening in a mysterious way that may or may not act as a deterrent. In other words, very Draco. He tore open the document and found a single sheet of paper inside.

 _Closet Door, beside the wrong jacket,_ it read. Nothing else. Harry read it twice, but just as he was about to put it aside to investigate the inside of the envelope, both pieces of paper burst into more blue flame, and disappeared.

“The wrong jacket,” he said dumbly.

The purple one. The one he was not supposed to wear. Awake suddenly, intrigued in a way that he had not been for seven-nearly-eight months, Harry ran up to their shared closet and reached beside the door where the purple jacket hung. Taped to the door, just beside the crack, was a scroll of parchment. Harry pulled it down.

 _Tell it the password._ “Sure!” Harry growled. “Why the fuck not, D. _The_ password. Why didn’t I _fucking_ think of that? What the hell were you playing at, you sodding idiot.” He sat down on the edge of his bed for a moment. A moment to be angry and sad and confused, and in the midst of that moment, his brain remembered how to be alive. How to remember without the cloud of grief. Harry would never know why it was that moment. But it was.

He leapt back up and ran all the way down the stairs, finding the box still lit with bright blue flames that did not seem to consume the things it surrounded. Harry smiled. The flames were quite beautiful. He approached carefully and whispered the words to himself. When nothing happened, he spoke up.

“Potter stinks,” he muttered with a grin. “Potter stinks.” The flames died down immediately.

“Those damned Unspeakable training courses,” he grumbled, taking the box easily from the cradle of the dark drawer. “‘Have a password with family members’ my ass. You just wanted me to say it, didn’t you, you bastard?”

The box was one of those cheap photo storage boxes. Black, with a small brass window frame on the front for labelling the box. He lifted the lid.

Inside, there was one more piece of parchment. It was scrolled tight, taking up no space at all inside such a large container. Strangely, it hadn’t moved at all in Harry’s attempts to remove the box; it was sitting as though it had just been placed there, in the middle, straight as if Draco had used a ruler to measure the sides before placing it. Anticipating more pain, Harry gingerly reached into the box. The parchment came free, and he unfurled it, sitting heavily in Draco’s large leather chair as he did.

_Harry,_

_The next few sentences are not going to make sense. But you have to trust me. You have to listen. If only because, Potter Stinks._

_If you are finding this, I assume you’ve been told I’m dead and are cleaning out my desk. Hopefully, it’s you. The charm should have only set off and revealed the paper if it is, but you never know when you make up a new spell._

_This is the important bit; I am NOT dead. I know. I’m sorry. But I’m not. I promise you. If you’re reading this, we are all in danger and you need to move fast._

_Meet me at the place where it all began. Bring the box._

_Love you,_

_D_

Harry stared at the parchment for many minutes, half waiting for it to explode into flames.

It did not.

 


	2. Chapter 2

Everything was dark.

He'd known, of course, when he agreed to this plan, that it was going to be dark. What he hadn't anticipated was that he would be _aware_ of the darkness.

When children are afraid of the dark, it's very rarely the absence of light that actually scares them. Instead, they fear the unknown. They are disquieted by the loss of solid facts and advance warning of approaching danger.

This wasn't that, and so Draco felt no fear; it had been one of his questions, asked without a shred of embarrassment. Anyone who had lived with Voldemort for any length of time knew what dangers lurked in the shadows. But Draco was safe. 

He just had too much time to think, which could be unpleasant. He was pretty sure it hadn’t been that long, and that Harry would be here soon. He wasn’t entirely sure  _ how  _ long it had been since he did not have to eat. Or drink. Or sleep or excrete. All those mundane things that helped with the passing of time, helped you feel the days go by, for better or worse, they weren’t happening. So, Draco was sure it had only been a couple of days, but he had no idea why.

Still. 

He was starting to wish it weren't quite so dark. 

* * *

Harry stood in the atrium of the Ministry for an hour, holding the black box inside a carrier bag and amped up beyond belief. He didn’t know what he was looking for, and he was slowly feeling more and more insane for looking. There was no starting place in the note, no clues beyond going to ‘the place where it all began’. 

 

He'd tried for the rest of Saturday morning to ignore the box. Clearly, Draco had set something up for a case one time then forgotten about it. The note was from a previously written record of something dark and sinister. Draco was dead.  He told himself over and over again that Draco was dead. He'd buried the body. He'd had the reading of the will. When the Malfoy family had refused to follow it, the magical transfer had happened anyway. That only happened when real death occurred. All of these things confirmed that Draco Malfoy _was_ dead.

And yet. 

The box had sat ominously on the desk while he whirled around it, sorting into the two boxes he'd gathered and the bin that he'd dragged up the stairs from the yard like a Muggle. It was hours before he let himself look at the mysterious object again. The room was almost empty, desolate and unrecognisable before he let himself pause again to look at the letter, examine the box once more.  It was the words that were bothering him.  _ Been staged.  _ As though there had always been a plan, and Draco had been in control of whatever it was. Finally, he’d just sighed to himself, found a carrier bag and dragged himself to the Ministry. 

Of course, once there, he was at a loss. What had he been thinking would happen? Draco wasn’t going to pop up out of a dark elevator and scream, “ _Just kidding_!” and Harry could hardly go up to a concierge desk to ask, “ _Yes, excuse me, I’m just wondering if you can help me in locating my dead husband?_ ” Feeling more than half-crazed—and beginning to wonder if  he should just take himself, black box and all, directly to Mungo’s and check himself in—Harry sat heavily on a bench in the echoing chamber to consider his options. He should go home, he knew, but he was stuck. He hadn't felt this stuck since he'd left the Ministry the last time. 

Leaving the Auror department five years ago had taken far more effort than it should have. He hated it. Plan and simple as treacle tart. Draco had barely batted an eye when he’d waltzed into their newly minted flat and announced that he would go to no more Ministry luncheons and refused to take on any more departmental meetings.   
  
“Yes, well, I’ve been expecting it,” he’d replied. “Ever since Minerva offered you the DADA post at the Christmas Ball. It’s not exactly a secret that you don’t like your job.”    
  
Harry was baffled. He’d been convinced all day that Draco was going to throw a regular, grade-A strop, complete with screaming and shouting, possibly even hurled objects. Unable to process that Draco was not at all arguing with his decision, Harry had presented all the reasons he should be allowed to go teach at Hogwarts, one by one, just as he had planned.   
  
“Harry,” Draco had eventually interrupted, holding up a hand to halt the well-rehearsed speech. “We’re  _ wizards _ . You can live wherever you bloody-well please. Actually, we should both live up there, though. I can come back and forth. It’s probably easier if you’re in the vicinity. For office hours, and the like.”    
  
So just like that, they’d sold the flat, bought a modest row host in Edinburgh, middle-distance for Harry to Apparate home and Draco to connect to the floo. Their lives had barely paused. Since then, the fact that they had formed a sordid romance in their early Ministry days very rarely made headlines; the forbidden love of an Auror and an Unspeakable was hardly news once the Auror was instead a boring, old professor, even  _ if  _ they had once been enemies on opposite sides of a war. Harry had not felt discombobulated since. Draco calmed him, sorted out his frazzled manic energy. Until this year, Harry had been relatively convinced that he would be content for the rest of his life. 

Harry shook his head. He had to stop reminiscing on a bench when it was getting him nowhere. He’d already gone over these moments, every single damn one of them, a million times in his head.  He stared down at the box and begged with everything he had. 

“Draco,” he said quietly to himself, “Draco, I’m here, and I don’t understand what you need me to do.” 

The black box in his hands remained stubbornly silent, and the small patches of Ministry professionals in the building at the weekend were wholly disinterested when Harry Potter began to cry. 

* * *

_Crotchity_ was not a word you heard very often anymore, but as Owen sighed and scratched the back of his head, he knew for certain he would use it to describe himself. This assignment had already been going on too long when he was barely two weeks in. Now, seven months later, he was ten pounds overweight, exhausted, and grumpy all the time. Watching a man mourn the loss of his husband was one thing, but doing it from afar as paid surveillance was downright torture. He’d survived the task only by eating a steady diet of sour keys and cheesy puffs. His favourite moments were when the sodding sad bloke with the floppy hair would settle down into a bed. Owen could watch a movie, then. Settle in until the morning relief came around. 

The twelve-hour shifts had never bothered him before this job, but this bloke was seriously the most  _ boring  _ human he had ever encountered, even amongst the Wizarding types he preferred working for most days now. It was sad, sure, but from what he’d gathered, the dude’s husband had been some sort of cop, killed in the line of duty. Owen had seen dozens of spouses grieve when he’d been in the service, but this guy really was a bit much. Barely left the house, didn’t really try and do much of anything for three months. It didn’t help that his directive of ‘tell me if he does  _ anything _ ’ had no parameters that made sense to him, leaving him to make notes of the random changes in routine the guy made. He usually got yelled at for them, but he figured it was better safe than anything else. 

The Saturday it started, Owen had been awake playing Last of Us for six hours longer than he should have. It was not a wise move in that he now had a rare day shift. But nothing had prepared him for watching the guy pick up the shoebox that he’d pulled out of the desk after a flash of light, waltz out the door, and disappear.   
  
“Uh,” he said into the phone when it was finally answered. “I don’t know what I’m reporting?” 

The other end of the line sighed heavily and said nothing.    
  
“Well, okay, but it seems significant; he broke the routine. He found a thing in the office desk, ran around the house for a while. And he just left, carrying a black box thing under his arm.”    
  
The line crackled.    
  
“Owen. Listen to me carefully. Close all screens. Lock your office. Go home, and speak to  _ no one  _ until I call you. Do you understand?”    
  
“Y-yes,” Owen agreed, already wondering what the fuck he’d gotten himself into this time. 

 


	3. Chapter 3

When Harry finally forced himself to go home, the Ministry halls had been empty for several hours. The pacing Aurors on duty had started to look at him strangely. Fortunately, most of them knew him by sight — the only time in his life he had been grateful for his fame. No one was going to bother him, not after the year he’d had. If he wanted to linger in the atrium for the entire night, who could blame him? 

The only reason he left, in the end, was that his body had decided to continue to function as normal, and he was hungry. The sandwich he made and shoved in his mouth in the kitchen tasted like dust and cement, but he swallowed it with the help of an entire glass of water and then curled back into the nest in the living room where he’d been sleeping. He couldn’t do the bed yet. 

Seven years was not a long time to be married, in the grand scheme of things. At the same time, it was also an eternity. An entire life of combined memories and correlated decisions. For Harry and Draco, seven years might as well have been twelve decades; they’d spent the first years of their employment in symbiotic departments of Ministry life resolutely ignoring mutual attraction. When they’d finally figured out how to talk their way past the war, they were already headlong into a complicated relationship that neither ever took for granted. 

Seven years and several lifetimes, Draco had said at their last anniversary. 

Hermione and Ginny showed up at the predetermined time of ten the next morning, dragging a groggy Harry from his troubled sleep. He’d been dreaming of standing at the end of a long corridor, Draco calling his name from far away as Harry attempted to reach him. He never got any closer. He awoke with his mouth tasting like metal and he didn’t pull trousers on before answering the door in his pants. 

Hermione’s face fell into it’s constant expression of the past several months; it was familiar, of course, since it was the same one he’d gotten the year Sirius died. A mix of concern, pity, exasperation, and frustration that she couldn’t fix him. She reached out a hand and patted the worst of his hair down feebly. Since having kids, Hermione’s motherly instincts had mostly centred around petting at her friends and trying to make them fit into her idea of ‘safe and sound’. It had always been endearing, but right now, a flash of annoyance crashed into Harry’s chest and he ducked out of her grasp. 

“You finish the office?” Ginny asked gently, no preamble or pity. He loved her for it. She’d been the only one to not try and force him to grieve faster. She never expected him to be better, so she never looked disappointed when she saw that he wasn’t. 

He nodded. He had, technically, finished the office. 

“There’s a bookshelf,” he amended. “I didn’t pack it because I think that Narcissa should probably have all of it. Old books and stuff.” 

Ginny nodded and squeezed his shoulder as she moved past him. 

“Put some new clothes on while we do this,” she called back to him. “We’ll go to the shops.” 

He wanted to argue. No, not that. He  _ wanted  _ to crawl back into his nest and let his dream brain work out how to get to Draco. The thought kicked his mind into gear. Did he tell them about the box? Did he show them the note from inside? For some reason, he didn’t think he should. 

Not ‘some reason’, he amended to himself. One reason. Deep down, Harry didn’t believe the ridiculous box. He knew Draco wasn’t really alive, in his heart of hearts. Telling Hermione, girl of logic and reality and pity, would only confirm what he already knew. That the hope was false. That this tiny shred of possibility was just his sadness forcing denial. He didn’t need that. 

The girls shrunk most of the larger crates down into one box, which they then levitated out to the waiting rust-coloured Mustang which was Arthur’s current obsession. He loved the ugly old car and had learned how to care for it the old fashioned way. The car was mostly Muggle, save for the expanded boot and the added sunroof which made it seem like it was always a clear, blue-skied day outside. 

Harry  climbed in, sunglasses covering the dark circles beneath his eyes. He’d pulled on a worn blue jumper that wasn’t his, and jeans that only just stayed up on his hips. He’d never really had weight to spare on his narrow frame, but the loss of the rich, buttery diet that sprang from Draco’s kitchen, combined with the lack of regular Quidditch and running meant that both the chunks of middle-aged weight and his hard-won muscle had all but disappeared from his frame. His clothes barely fit. That’s why the blue jumper was so comfortable; Draco had always been taller and just a little bit skinnier. 

“Where do you want to go, love?” Ginny said kindly, turning to him from the front seat. 

He shrugged. Thinking quickly he cleared his throat.

“Actually,” he amended. “Do you want to go up to the castle for lunch?” 

He tried to make the question light and wistful, as though he was considering them and the fact that they’d come all this way. Hermione was watching him through the rearview as she delicately pulled them onto the road. Her face brightened slightly at the suggestion. Technically, they didn’t need the car if they were only going up through the city to the Apparition point, but she drove them through the old, hilly, cobbled roads without complaint. 

“This is a good idea,” Ginny said soothingly as they parked outside the gates of Hogsmeade on the side of a disused country road. “We can visit Neville before term starts. And you can clear out some of the junk in your office before your leave ends. Are you still thinking of taking teaching quarters?” 

Harry shrugged again. Answering her questions required far too much commitment and his brain was whirling around. The black box was here, miniaturized to sit in the back pocket of his jeans like he was carrying a particularly obnoxious wallet. No one had said anything about it yet. He was already trying to sort out how to get away from them to go search for Draco; the possible locations made his head spin. Was it the alcove behind the monk tapestry on the third floor, the one where he’d kissed Draco the first time during that fight in eighth year? Or was it the room of requirement, where they’d saved each other's lives. Was it instead that fourth floor bathroom, where tears in a mirror had caused Harry to simultaneously almost kill Malfoy, and see him as a real human for the first time ever?

It could be any of these places. It could be none of them.

Hogwarts was so intertwined with them, with their history and their anatomy as a couple that Harry couldn’t stop listing the possible locations for ‘where it all began’. It was dizzying. 

“Haven’t decided yet,” he said softly, finally answering Ginny, who had looped her arm through his. He caught the very edge of Hermione’s sigh, though she’d definitely tried to stifle it. He looked at her, trying not to glare. 

“The house closes in fourteen days, Harry,” she said gently. 

“I know.” He didn’t try to explain further. “I am very much aware of that, Hermione.” 

Fourteen days was not a lot of time. Yet, if Draco’s letter was to be taken to heart, he needed to move far faster than that. 

“Come on,” he said, quickening his pace. “We’ll miss lunch service.”

_ "You'd be fine with this being forever, wouldn't you?" Draco asked, not harsh but definitely serious.  _

_ "Fine with what?" Harry replied.  _

_ "Fine with every day being the same. Everything being predictable. Eat roast at Hogwarts every Sunday. Drink honeymeade and avoid the peas. Nightcap with Longbottom, home for bed by ten?" _

_ "Is there something wrong with that?"  _

_ "No, Draco said, a genuine smile smoothing out the lines of slight judgement that had appeared. "No, not at all. I think I just need to get used to it." _

_Harry kissed his cheek, right there at the table. A few of the younger students tittered. No one else was watching them._

_"I had my time for wildness. You go on enough adventures for the both of us now, my love," he insisted. "I'm content with my puzzle-free Sunday roast."_

Harry slipped out right after eating pudding, claiming that he was just going to run up to his office and grab a few things. Hermione found him an hour and a half later, cradling the resized box in his lap, too broken and exhausted to even be crying. His search had been fruitless. He was still completely unsure of what sort of clues he was even looking for. 

“Hermione,” he choked. “Hermione, I need help.”

* * *

Owen didn’t wait at home, of course. He hadn’t become the youngest agent in the company by following the orders of the faceless operatives on the other end of the line. He followed his gut, even if that same gut had nearly gotten him killed a half a dozen times or so.

When the mark travelled north out of Edinburgh up the narrow lanes of the highlands, he was grateful for the late summer days and the fact that the roads were currently dry. He could pick out a target from a distance, knew four types of martial arts, was built like a brick truck instead of the nerdy gamer type everyone expected, but Owen was still a nervous driver. 

He guzzled an energy drink and tried to blink himself awake, but even still, the two women the man travelled with and their large, strange coloured car, appeared to vanish into thin air at the edge of the city. 

Owen drove straight at where the road disappeared, staring hard at the faint line of mirage that seemed to hang over the line. He blinked again when he found himself on an old, cobbled street; he eased the car off to the side of a road, trying desperately not to get distracted by the pointy hats, robes, and the vestments of the busy, medieval era street. At least not until he was parked. He hopped out quickly and discovered his targets hadn't gotten far. They were walking, arm in arm, up a long and winding path that seemed to lead out of the small village behind them. 

He followed the trio at a distance, silent and quick. Silent, except for when he was faced with a large, looming castle, ancient and beautiful. Owen had grown up in this area. 

And there had definitely never been a castle here before.

 


	4. Chapter 4

The phone call woke him at 3:45 the next morning. He was conscious, but not actually awake. The smell of the inn he was in had kept him awake, which was ridiculous in retrospect. But he couldn’t get it out of his mind that it smelt of death and mildew, and even when he’d fallen asleep, his dreams had been controlled by images of disaster.   
  
“Lo?” he said into the receiver.   
  
“Owen Travers?” a deep voice replied.

“Speaking?”    
  
“Yes, but from where,” the voice growled. “Can you explain to my boss,  _ please _ , why you are not currently at your residence, where you were ordered to be?”    


Owen swallowed. He’d wondered when that was going to catch up to him. Really, though, resolve began to flood through him the more afraid he became. If they’d really cared to keep tabs on him, someone should have come and briefed him the night he’d called in his report.    
  
“I took matters into my own hands,” he answered simply. “I was paid to do surveillance, and since no one  _ appeared  _ to be dealing with the subject, I’m surveilling.”   
  
“ _ What _ ?” the voice seethed. 

“If you didn’t want a tracker on him, I would have told you I was the wrong man for the job.”   
  
A new voice came on the line, the familiar unconcerned drawl sending more of a chill down his spine than the anger of the other man had.   
  
“Mr Travers,” he stated. “We have your location. I’m unclear,  _ exactly, _ how you managed to get into Hogsmeade, but be assured, should you attempt to evade us a second time, the consequences will be...unpleasant.”    
  
“I’m not  _ evading, _ ” Oliver hissed, more confidence in his tone than he felt.    
  
“Unpleasant, Mr Travers,” the man repeated. “We will be there shortly. What room are you in?”  __

He hung up and decided to put on some clothes; if he was going to die, he’d rather not do it in his boxers. 

* * *

Hermione had only managed to keep him at the castle by threatening to stun him if he didn’t take a sleeping draught. He woke up in his clothes on top of his bed, the newly cleaned quarters around him feeling too bright and too sterile. He knew that he’d technically always had this second room, to be used as a bedroom, but since he’d always gone home each night, it had just been shoved full of various magical objects; some, he acquired during summer trips with Draco, ducking into dark allies together with a giggle and a sneakiness that would have better suited much younger men. Some he’d inherited from McGonagall, who’d kept Remus’ office as it was for as long as she possibly could. The last two crates, which were still shoved in the corner, were from two former students, who were now working on a hippogriff ranch in Brazil. They contained various artefacts that he’d been meaning to catalogue and use for teaching dark magic detection. But he’d gotten them two weeks before Draco’s last mission, and he hadn't opened them again since. 

The noticing of all this coincided with a gentle knock on his door, the one that must have woken him. 

“Harry?” Ginny said, sticking her head into the room. “There’s an owl here for you. Seems important.” 

“Can you take it?” he said groggily.   
  
She chuckled. “Won’t let me. Can’t seem to touch it.”    
  
Harry sat bolt upright.    
  
“Yeah, that’s what I thought, too," Ginny said sympathetically. "But Hermione isn’t sure, and I never saw his owl.”    
  
Harry swung himself out of bed and padded to the door, touching Ginny on the shoulder as he passed her. 

At the window, the large golden bird, ruffled and annoyed, eyeing the room with its miserly gaze, filled Harry’s heart with a swelling dread. He wanted to just let the hope that lay underneath it burst through, but the last thread of logic that had been keeping him sane remembered that Narcissa had Draco’s owl now. There was no cause for the excitement. 

“ Adrastus,” he murmured, moving to the window with a hand extended. The great eagle owl bowed her head and allowed him to scratch the spot behind his ear. 

“Draco  _ would  _ have a giant fucking owl he didn’t need,” Ginny teased, approaching slowly as Adrastus eyed her carefully. “Is he always such a dick?”    
  
Harry chuckled. “Yup,” he said quietly. “We’ve had him since he was just a chick, and he still mostly hates me. I’m surprised Narcissa used him. He doesn’t normally let anyone except…”

“It’s okay, Harry,” Hermione said from the sofa where she was balancing a cup of tea. “Take the letter then come sit. I have some ideas.”    
  
Ginny chuckled again, the sound light and misplaced. “She was up all night.”    
  
“I got two whole hours of sleep,” Hermione retorted. “This was important.”    
  
“So what, now I’m _not_ crazy?” Harry quipped.    
  
“Harry,” she chastised. 

He shook his head and turned back to the bird, who extended his leg. Harry pulled off the small letter attached, expecting the bird to dart back out the open window. Instead, Adrastus took flight into the room and settled himself on the perch that normally housed Faustus, Harry’s small barn owl, who was currently roosting in the owlry.   
  
“He’d better not catch you there,” Harry said to the owl once he’d stopped ruffling his feathers. He looked up at Harry for a moment before bending back down to nibble at week-old treats in the bowl below. “Tough guy, huh? Whatever. I know you’re afraid of him, you big faker.” 

Harry unfurled the letter and sat down beside Hermione heavily, accepting the tea that Ginny handed him to his left.    
  
“Well, Minister. What do you make of this?” he asked wearily, handing the note to Hermione. It was short and unsigned, but there was no doubt in his mind who it was from. And not just because of the owl, either. 

_ You’ll need Owen Travers to open the portal. Move fast. He’s being used by forces he does not understand. Find him before they do. NO MAGIC.  _

“Hermione?” Ginny asked a moment later.   
  
“Well, it doesn’t make things any  _ more  _ confusing," she sighed. "Go change, Harry. We need to go to Diagon.” 


	5. Chapter 5

Owen’s back was against the wall. He was grateful for that, at least, considering absolutely nothing else currently made sense. He was grateful that the tactics of a life lived defensively still applied. He tried to calculate an exit route based on the available information, but unfortunately, he was rather stuck; he was stuck because two men who he had never seen before had cornered him and seemed to be trying to scare him while holding sticks in front of his face.

That wasn’t what had disquieted him, though. Owen was uncomfortable because, against all sense and reason, he _was_ afraid. Something deep down in his core told him that he was in grave danger. Serious trouble. He didn’t feel like that often. Before he’d been kicked out, every report from the agency had included the phrase "reckless to the point of stupidity" and "ignorant of limitations, even in regards to personal safety”.

The bravery fled him now. The stupid courage that held fast disappeared in the light of this tall blonde man and his shorter, squatter compatriot, who looked like he could break him into three separate pieces just with a fist.

"I'll ask one final time, Mr Travers. How did you find this place?" the taller man asked icily.

Owen held up his hands defensively. "Look, I get why you're mad. I'm sorry. But honestly, you didn't show up in time, and the bloke left the flat with those two women, and I just followed them instinctively. You don't know what would have happened if I didn't! As it is, you're wasting time standing here with me, pointing your branches at me. He's already disappeared into that great bloody castle! What the hell you playing, at with those? Gonna rap my knuckles for being naughty? "

He heard himself babbling. He could admit to his terrified brain that this was not a wise move. But he couldn't seem to stop, not even when the large, brutish man stepped forward with a growl.

"I'll show you what we do with them that's naughty," he threatened.

But the other man held up a hand, elegant and calm. His companion froze.

"Enough, Raoul. We need him alive if we are going to solve this," he commanded. "My son may be a fool for getting us into this mess but that does not mean he's stupid." He returned his icy gaze to Owen's face.

"Oh dear. Wait a moment," he sneered. "Did you say _castle?"_

Owen stood, defiant. Nodded.

The blonde man sighed and shook his head.

"Raoul, Obliviate him. Tie him up just in case. I think we need to go to Diagon Alley. _Now_."

The man stepped forward, his stick raised in front of him. He was already muttering a word when the room went black.

The next thing Owen knew, the wall behind him had caved in with the great crack of an explosion and an unfamiliar haze of purple smoke. He looked around, dazed, and quickly realised that whatever had happened had knocked out both his captors. He didn't hesitate a second more. He dashed over their prone bodies and out the door. 

He had an alley to find.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my solution to the struggle to finish this fic (which is already outlined and so I WILL finish it) is to publish the chunks I write. Thank you for your patience. I promise I'm not being deliberately cliff-hanger-heavy :D

Harry argued with Hermione all the way down to London. For some reason, she had insisted they take the train. Which meant that it had taken five hours longer to get to Draco than it needed to. She’d insisted that he needed to get some more sleep, he’d insisted that there was no way he was going to be able to rest. Ginny had finally sent a _Silenco_ at both of them and halted the conversation until Harry successfully poked her in the ribs enough for her to list it. He’d just sulked for the final hour, pretending Hermione wasn’t in the car with him. 

“So. Why are we in London?” Ginny asked as they got left King’s Cross. “I thought you already checked the Ministry.”   
  
“We aren’t in _London_ ,” Hermione said, exasperated. “We’re going to Diagon.”   
  
“Okay, fine, why are we—”   
  
“Harry, darling. I love you,” Hermione lectured. “And I suppose you’re grieving and everything. But did you seriously not realize that the ‘ _place where it all began_ ’ meant Madam Malkin’s? 

Harry stopped dead in the street. “Wh-what? What do you mean _Madam Malkin’s?_ ”   
  
“It’s where you met him first. When we were eleven. Merlin, Harry. He used to talk about that all the time. It was in his _wedding_ toast, for crying out loud. I remember it so clearly. Something about how lucky we all were to be able to have second chances at love at first sight. I didn’t think about it at first, either.”   
  
“Yeah, but he wasn’t _your_ husband,” Harry grumbled, scrubbing at his face. “Fuck.”   
  
“Harry,” Ginny said cautiously, gripping his arm. “Harry, what exactly are we expecting is going to happen when we get to…wherever we’re going.”   
  
“What do you mean, Ginny?” Harry hissed. He wanted to take the tone back, he really did. But something in the question made him feel extra insane, and he was honestly all out of the ability to care. He was being accused of something.   
  
“Well,” Ginny answered with predictable defensiveness. “I mean. We had a funeral for him, Harry. The Ministry declared his death an accident. Because there was an investigation. _Ron_ conducted the investigation. So. What. Are you. Hoping. To find.”   
  
“Ginny—” Hermione warned.   
  
Her sharp gaze snapped to Hermoine. “Don’t ‘Ginny’ me. I want to know how many pieces of our best friend I’m going to have to pick up off the floor in an hour.”   
  
Harry collapsed into his frame a little bit. “I’m not expecting anything, Gin. Don’t worry. I just want this last puzzle of his concluded. Then I can leave the house. Go back to...whatever my life is now. Move...forward.”   
  
Ginny softened and folded him into her arms. “Okay. Okay, let’s go. We can ask Madam Malkin what she knows. Then we’ll go for dinner at the old place. Get really drunk. Okay?”   
  
He nodded into her familiar coconut scented hair and forced himself not to start crying. He’d cried enough tears in the past seven months. 

Their arrival at Diagon went by with zero fanfare. In the years right after the battle, Harry had stopped coming here; walking into the Leaky had resulted in so much brouhaha that it had quickly stopped being worth it to enter the small, crowded wizarding quarter. 

Now, the three of them walked unhindered down the cobbled street until the reached the familiar striped awning of the robe shop. Harry paused and took a deep breath, studying the elaborate display. He pulled the black box from his rucksack, opened the lid, and gazed inside with bated breath. He wasn’t waiting for something to happen. 

He wasn’t. 

“Come on,” he said slowly. “We met inside, in the fitting area.”   
  
He strode forward with more conviction than he felt, pushed open the door, and let the tiny tinkling bells above his head chime as loudly as he could without slamming the door behind him. 

“Be right with you,” the friendly, unmistakable voice of the old dressmaker called out from the back. “Just finishing up!”   
  
Harry stood stilted and unsure of himself in the middle of the display room. He knew how awkward he looked, and for the first time, it occurred to him that he had no idea what he was about to say. How does one introduce the idea of ‘my dead husband left me a riddle and told me to come find him’ without seeming completely insane? He looked desperately at Hermione, who clasped his hand firmly and did not let go. 

In the end, he needn't have worried. 

“Harry,” Madam Malkin announced in a reverent whisper the second she stepped out from behind the curtain to the back room. “Oh Harry, _finally._ ” 

What transpired in the next five minutes was the strangest five minutes of the past decade of his life; that might seem like much, but Harry reasoned that the first 18 years had contained more than one lifetime of strangeness and would likely never be repeated.

The old witch ran to him, caught him in a one-handed hug as she wrenched the box from him with her other arm. Hermione had her wand trained on the seamstress before Harry could even react, and Madam Malkin laughed at the threat as though Hermione had brandished a daisy.   
  
“Put that away, Minister. No wands in my shop. You know the rules. Come, all of you. Come back here. This is not a conversation for the floor. Rebekkah!” 

A young witch with long, curly dark hair scurried out and nodded as though she already knew what she was going to be asked. Madam Malkin beckoned them to follow her to the back chamber, where the sight of the raised fitting platforms brought a chill to Harry’s bones he had not been expecting. 

_...My father’s next door buying my books and mother’s up the street looking at wands. Then I’m going to drag them off to look at racing brooms…_

The words — the first Draco had ever spoken to him — leapt unbidden to his mind. How did he remember that? He was not the sort to remember trivial details or sentimentalities. The boy that had said those words had disappeared long before Draco had ever even entered his life fully. And yet, here they were, as clear as though Draco was standing here.   
  
“I’d almost given up on you, Mr Potter,” Malkin was saying as she unceremoniously dropped to her knees in her beautifully tailored suit and began negotiating with the carpet at the base of one of the platforms. “It’s been...what, almost a year?”   
  
“Seven months, sixteen days, thirteen hours,” Harry mumbled without thinking.   
  
She paused her rummaging and granted him a pitying look before continuing. “Well, yes. Exactly. I tried so hard to convince him to leave a simpler clue. He insisted it wasn’t safe. You know what he was like, of course, hard-headed when he’d made his mind up. Big softy the rest of the time, but not once he’d decided something. Not exactly the most novel combination of personality traits, but, goodness, did he love you. Would never shut up for more than a few — aha. There we are.”   
  
She stood more quickly than her outfit and age would have suggested she could, triumphantly holding up what looked like a small slip of paper and a brass key on a thong of leather.   
  
“So, where is he?” she asked excitedly. 

“Madam Malkin,” Hermione said softly, the first to speak in a while. “Madam Malkin...Draco is...well, he passed away.”   
  
“Yes, I know,” she said impatiently. “Which is why you’re here, with the box. He said it would only be a week or two, but..well, I think I told him that he was underestimating grief. He seemed convinced that Harry would be fine. But no, that’s not what I meant. I meant, where are you keeping Travers?”   
  
“Travers?” Harry asked. “ _Owen_ Travers.”   
  
“Don’t tell me he’s escaped. I thought they were watching him?”   
  
“I… we don’t know.”   
  
Madam Malkin eyed him carefully, as though looking for subterfuge in their words. “Well,” she concluded. “That’s going to be quite a problem. You’ll never get into the vault without Travers. Still. My part was just to give you the key. Don’t suppose I have any reason not to follow through. Best of luck, Mr Potter. You send him to me for a good smacking upside the head, will you?” 

On Autopilot, Harry reached out and took the key and paper from her outstretched hand. With trembling grip, he unfolded the page. 

 _Vault 1212_ was all it said. 


	7. Chapter 7

If he had been less rash, less proud, he may have been able to avoid this; he wouldn’t have been here so long. Time may not have been passing in the usual fashion, but Draco _knew_ it had been longer than he’d intended. Mostly, because the darkness was lifting, only slightly. He was waking up. He tried hard not to let his awareness shift too far toward the light. If he woke up before Harry had found him, he’d die of dehydration before anyone even heard him.

The voices quickly became the second clue. He could hear them, close enough that the echoes of them in his consciousness gave him whispers, indecipherable and largely indiscernible from each other.

Except for one.

One, he would have recognised in the place beyond life. One, he could have picked out of a room full of a thousand people.

One was whispering _I’m going to drag them off to look at racing brooms_ to himself, over and over again.

* * *

Owen stumbled out into the street in the frenzied chaos of whatever had happened in the hotel. Clearly the blast had been loud enough to alert others, but he managed to slip past them as they scrambled up the stairs.

He was confused and tired and frankly, extremely pissed off. There wasn’t much point to any of these emotions, though, so he shrugged them off and threw them to the back of his mind. The one thing he couldn’t seem to rid himself of, however, was the lingering feeling that he was _forgetting_ something. It was like when you weren’t sure if you’d locked the door, the niggling in the back of his eyes that he’d left the door unlocked.

The first person he ran into in the street looked at him like he was insane when he asked about this Digone Alley place he needed to find, and hurried off with his shopping with nothing more than a few fervent glances backwards.

The shops on this street were incredibly strange. He wondered what kind of amusement park fun ride he’d ended up in. The names above the doors made no sense, and he could barely see the cobbles for how busy it was. He glanced around him at street signs until he finally discovered one that said held the simple picture of a train, old fashioned and worn but pointing to the East.

He hurried down the path, ignoring the strangeness all around him and yet feeling like it wasn’t that strange. If he’d stopped to consider this for a moment, he might have questioned why people in strange, Halloween-reminiscent hats and long flowing robes didn’t feel strange in the middle of a Saturday on a Scottish high street, but he was moving too fast, trained into thinking twelve steps ahead. His only concern right now was discovering what he was involved in with that damned black box. For some reason, his hesitation to just pop in and shoot the brown-haired saad man before his employers got to him had made perfect sense. He had a sneaking suspicion it was in everyone's best interest to protect that man.

The train station looked like it belonged in a Victorian movie, but he marched up to the open counter and demanded a ticket to Digone Alley in the most authoritative voice he could muster, considering his ears were still ringing slightly.

The older women sitting behind the counter looked up briefly, annoyance flashing on her face as she sighed. “Look, love. Why you people don’t just floo is beyond me, but you well know you buy your ticket on the train, and you’re about four minutes from missing it. So if you really fancy the many hours of nostalgia, I suggest you run, dear.”

Pausing only a moment to be irritated, Owen shook his head and murmured, “Which platform?”

Now, fury crossed the woman’s face. She stood and began to close the window between them, muttering ‘which platform’ angrily. Whirling around, Owen understood her annoyance. The only available platform was right behind him, with a large, scarlet train just beginning to pull out of the station.

It wasn’t until five hours later, itching from head-to-toe with anxious energy at the announcement that the terminal station of “London King’s Cross” was approaching, that he realised he had spent the entire day sitting behind the man and the black box.

He followed them at a clipped pace, even when they walked through a brick wall and he found himself facing the garden of a very shitty looking pub.

“What in the actual fuck is going on?” he muttered out loud.

“Alright, love?” a kind lady said behind him. “You forget the pattern? No worries, think Tom changed it this month. Here, let me.”

Pulling out a stick that made him flinch at the familiarity, she eyed him warily from the side as she tapped the wall. Owen followed her when she beckoned and found himself standing in the middle of another medieval street full of bizarre humans.

“Okay, no seriously,” he insisted. “What is going on?” “Pardon me, sir?” the lady asked him, tucking her stick back in her purse. “Who are you?” he demanded.

“Well…” she said, sounding affronted. “I’m _Doris Crockford._ And who are _you,_ then.”

He took a deep breath, calmed his nerves. “Owen. Travers.”

Her eyes went wide and she seemed to scuttle a little further from him. “Oh. S-sorry, sir. I didn’t mean any offence. I hope you have a pleasant day. Perhaps I’ll see you later. Need to go get some...I have to stop by the bank. I—I hear the weather will hold?”

He nodded shortly, already walking away. ‘Bank’ was the first clue he had had since he’d been in the explosion. He started fervently looking around, but he needn't have paid quite so much attention. Moments later, he stood in front of a huge white marble building, conveniently labelled bank. And on the steps, were three people. Two women, both tall and polar opposites, accompanying the curly-haired man with his large black box.

“We need a plan, Harry,” the one woman was insisting.

“I have a plan,” the man — presumably Harry— replied angrily. “My plan is to take this key, and the name 'Owen Travers', and demand entry.”

“Your 'plan' is to force the hand of Goblins?” the red-headed woman replied sceptically. 

Owen didn’t wait to have his luck changed for the fourth time that day.    
  
“Hey!” he shouted from across the cobbles, louder than was likely necessary. “Hey, you!” The man turned to face him, stick in hand. Owen raised his hands. “I’m Owen,” he shouted. 

“What?”    
  
“I’m Owen Travers.” 

It was the last thing he said before his world melted into the darkness.   



	8. Chapter 8

“Harry!” Ginny shouted, rushing forward to try and break the tall man’s fall as he crumpled to the pavement. “What the hell did you just cast?!”   
  
“He’s just asleep,” Harry protested. “I don’t trust anyone right now. Are you seriously going to blame me for that?”   
  
“Well, no,” Ginny conceded angrily, “but I think it’s going to be rather difficult to waltz up to a goblin and say, ‘pretty please take us to this unconscious man’s vault’.”

“Well, I can wake him _up_ ,” Harry retorted. “I just reacted.”   
  
“He did say  _Travers,_ right?” Hermione said to his left. He nodded. “And are we in agreement that is likely the same family name as escaped-Azkaban-Sacred-Twenty-Eight joy right?”   
  
“It seems very likely,” Ginny said slowly, turning the body over in front of her and staring at Harry, who sighed, cast an _incarcerous_ and then revived him. He disagreed with her that this man was not a threat, but there was no arguing that they were about to draw attention to themselves, which was not going to help. 

The wild panic in the man’s eyes as he returned to the land of the living was sickeningly gratifying, and Harry didn’t even bother trying to deny himself that; he’d had a very long year. He allowed the macabre glee that flared in him as he recognized fear. He’d examine that later.   
  
“You, don’t speak,” he commanded, wand still raised as he stocked forward and wrenched him up by the armpit. “Answers only, and you keep moving. Cause any trouble, I put you back out. You’re bound, as you’ve noticed.”   
  
He had not, apparently, noticed. He attempted to move his arms and discovered them trapped. He tried to spin in Harry’s grip, an obvious attempt to look at his own arms. The fear magnified as he realised he was stuck.   
  
“Yes, exactly,” Harry whispered menacingly, continuing up the stairs and motioning for the girls to follow. “Now, tell me _exactly_ what you know about my husband’s death.”   
  
“Death? Hus-husband?”   
  
“Don’t even start. Your name is on a piece of paper in my pocket, and the number to your vault was inside a concealed box. So don’t fucking play with me. I promise you, I’ve very little stopping me from destroying you right now. It has been a very long two days. Which, considering my year, is saying something.”   
  
“I-I don’t know...is this something to do with the black box? Is there evidence in it, or something? I promise I had nothing to do with it. Or any deaths. Well, okay, no, but. I just—they hired me to follow you, that’s all I know.”   
  
“Follow me?” Harry stammered, stopping in his tracks. “Who’s following me? Hermione, are there people following us?”   
  
“They know where you are,” Owen said boldly, seeming to think he had some sort of advantage all of a sudden. Which was ludicrous given that Harry still hadn't seen a wand or any form of protective spells or clothing. It was almost surprising to note how large the man was, how well-trained he looked; Harry almost wanted to laugh. Despite the fact that he looked as though he may wet himself at any moment, Owen Travers seemed to be attempting intimidation. Harry whirled around again, pointing a threatening arm in the man's face until his mouth closed involuntarily.

"Why are we headed to your vault?" he demanded. "What’s waiting for us there? The people who murdered my husband? Was it you? Trying to tie up loose ends, are you? _Do they know who I am_ ?”   
  
The sharp chill in his voice made Hermione cringe. He hadn’t used that tone in a long, long time, but he was hardly about to back down. He had lost his cool many hours ago. He wrenched Owen by the arm and up the steps towards the bank. 

“Harry, be reasonable,” Hermione urged. “We aren’t going to be granted entry with a man bound by his a spell. Release him.”   
  
“Spell?” Owen muttered, sounding very much like he was just starting to figure out how dangerous Harry could be.   
  
“Fine,” Harry huffed. “Where is your wand?”   
  
“I...listen, mate, I have no bloody clue what you are on about. If you don’t untie me, I’ll be forced to report you to the police.”   
  
“The police?” Ginny interjected, stopping Harry with a hand on his arm. “Ginny, don’t. We’re going inside.”   
  
“Harry,” she insisted. “Harry, I hate to break it to you, but I think this man is a Muggle.” 

“Don’t be ridiculous, Gin. _Travers._  He’s in Draco’s note. Just...let’s get this over with. Where. Is. Your. Wand,” he repeated through gritted teeth.    
  
“Harry, _think,_ ” Ginny said testily. “He ran up to us, unarmed, fell to the first spell you cast, and he has no idea what the hell you’re talking about. Evidence, police. Telling us they know where you are. It adds up, love. He’s Muggle.”   
  
“I—” 

* * *

Owen had had enough. In the middle of his captor's argument, he looked wildly around the street, desperately searching for anyone who might be able to help. An officer, a strong looking bloke. Hell, a  _crossing guard_ would do right at this moment. Just someone in a bright vest to call attention to them. 

“Look,” Owen said, making his voice as calm and reasonable as he could muster, drawing on years of experience negotiating for hostages. “What do you need me to do? Go up there, into the bank, right? I think we can all handle that. I won’t even make a fuss. I don’t want to be mixed up in this any more than—”  
  
But Owen stopped speaking. He stopped moving, frozen to the spot despite the man still tugging on his arm. To his left, next to the strangely medieval building with the large owl sculpture positioned on the top, there stood a very tall, very sinister-looking man. A man with silver-blonde hair and a raptor-like gaze, surveying the street. 

“Don’t. Move," he growled, heedless of his disadvantaged situation. "We need to get out of the open. Right now. Those men down there tried to kill me for coming to find you. I can _help_ you. Let’s just get off the street. Now.”   
  
The man with the pointy stick and his red-headed girlfriend both whipped around, but the pretty one with the curly dark brown locks didn’t seem to need to confirm his story. Gripping her friend, who was still holding him, she dragged them all up the steps. 

Owen stumbled when they got inside. Something about this place was making his head swim with familiarity. But that couldn’t be right. He’d never been in a place building that was so resplendent, so full of grandeur. Of that, he was sure. Not to mention that he’d _definitely never_  witnessed a creature quite like the ones that surrounded their little party, dashing about from left to right. 

Except that maybe he had? 

“Why do I know this place?” he whispered, not at all sure who he was talking to. “I...this just...I think I’ve been here before.”   
  
“Hush,” the girl said to him, tightening her grip on his arm and propping it up, like he was weak and about to faint; which, if he was honest, was a distinct possibility. 

They approached the first desk they came too, where one of the stout creatures looked up with widened eyes. 

“Ms Granger, Ma’am,” he said reverently. 

“Good day, Bruggelk,” she replied. “Forgive us for not having an appointment. My friend here, Mr Travers, has had quite a shock...bad family news, you understand. We need to access his vault. It’s rather urgent.”   
  
Owen, frozen with his strange sense of Deja Vu, stood silently at her side and said nothing. 

“But of course, Ms Granger,” the creature said, bowing lowly. “Does Mr Travers have his key? Not that he’d need it, of course. Not technically, given that you're asking. It's just...tends to make things easier.”   
  
Despite seeming both fierce and relatively annoyed, there was a hint of something else in the creature's voice, something that Owen understood better than most. 

Fear. 

“We do have the key,” the man said quickly, leaning forward so the creature could see him. “Vault 1212.” 

The creature's features rearranged and he looked, once again, threatening and violent.   
  
“Yes, _thank you, Harry,_ ” the brown-haired women hissed, turning sharply back to the bank worker, who just nodded shortly and began to walk away with a terse 'wait here' behind him. 

Seizing his opportunity, Owen whipped around.

“Listen,” he hissed as harshly as he could without calling attention to their group. “I realise I don't have the advantage here. You've made it very clear that you can kill me."   
  
The three of him just stared angrily. He sighed and pushed on. "I don’t know how or why, but it feels like we are all in danger. So, at the very least, I want to know why we are here and who the  _hell_ you people are. You have to admit, you need me for something. If I raise the alarm, whatever you are trying to steal is as good as gone. Fucking names, at least.” 

He crossed his arms and glared, despite the level of trembling he was internally feeling. 

“He has a point,” the woman who had just unwillingly let go of his arm sighed.

Her friend nodded, and she turned back to him.

“Okay, listen," she continued. "I’m Hermione. I...work for the government. He’s Harry. He’s a professor. That’s Ginny. She...plays a sport professionally. That’s not that important, but like...we aren’t exactly killers-for-hire, so you can relax. His husband died. About eight months ago.” 

“Seven months, sixteen days, fifteen hours,” the man murmured, looking pained.   
  
“And then,” Hermione continued, ignoring him. “He found a box of that said he  _wasn’t_ dead and now we’re here, with the key to what is apparently your bank vault and a set of very confusing clues, and that’s all we know. Now, we can’t promise you you’ll be safe, but can you please just come down to the vaults with us? Your surname, it’s—”   
  
“Hermione,” the red-head—Ginny—interrupted warningly, “don’t.” 

“What? He doesn’t know anyway,” she grumbled. “Fine. So, Owen. Will you help us a little bit longer?”   
  
Her voice was desperate. His resolve inexplicably crumbled. “Yeah, fine. I have a gun in my sock.”   
  
They looked at him sharply.

“What? Just thought you should know.”   
  
“Noted.” 

* * *

Harry was buzzing with fear, anticipation, confusion, and the intense need to not get his hopes up. He took Ginny’s hand and squeezed tight. This thing he was headed for was impossible, a complicated scavenger hunt that might just give him a little bit of closure, but certainly nothing more. Owen’s sudden demand of information had made it very clear to him how unprepared they were for what may or may not lie ahead. As they walked forward after the ornery goblin, who seemed to only be helping them out of fear of Minister Ganger, he tried to catalogue all the information he had. 

The box.

Lucius.

A Sacred Family member who was either a squib or had had his memory severely altered.

A bank vault in a building that had never been his friend.

And the confusing reality that his dead husband’s owl had delivered a note about an utterly baseless connection to the man who was now rightfully trying to flee. 

They descended a staircase that Harry had never taken and hopped into a very short, very uneventful mine cart ride. They seemed to be only a level or two down, which was confusing given the vault number.

The door they stopped in front of was a normal height and unadorned, no gleaming metal or sigils. It glowed with a blue faint light that was the only indicator that it contained magic at all. Harry fished the small vault key from the inside of his trousers and handed it to the goblin before he was asked. 

“Stand back,” Harry told Travers, pulling his wand and waiting for the door to open. With a hiss and a pop, the hinges creaked. In the end, Harry couldn't have warned Travers. Whatever was inside the vault was very much ready for what awaited it, and as soon as the door stopped moving, two things happened simultaneously. 

First, an eerily familiar voice shouted  _Stupefy,_ sending Travers backwards and flat on the ground. Harry leapt forward trying to block an impending spell. 

And at the same time, with his wand raised defensively, Harry's heart stopped beating at the muttering of one, particularly recognisable word. 

“ _Harry_?” 

 


	9. Chapter 9

“Harry, listen,” Hermione said, stepping forward in the semi-darkness and gently pulling his wand from his hand. “I know how mad you’re going to be. I know how weird this is. Please try to be rational, okay?”    
  
“There’s no way it’s actually him,” Harry murmured, easily giving up his wand and taking a step forward— a stupid, ill-advised step forward toward the source of wand fire, which had also happened to sound exactly like Draco.    
  
“Harry?” the voice called again, now accompanied by footsteps and emerging from the vault. “Hermione, is it safe?”    
  
“I have his wand,” she replied. “You okay?”    
  
“Yeah. Bit woozy, but fine. I’m coming out, okay? Hold him.”    
  
Hermione’s arms went around his shoulders and he instinctively tensed. 

When he stepped out into the dim light, Draco was so perfectly himself that Harry’s knees buckled beneath him. He was dressed in his uniform, the crimson coat draped with its ludicrous epaulette pins across his shoulders. His hair was neatly trimmed and lay flat against his head. He looked, for all intents and purposes, like he had the morning before he’d left Harry and then never come home. 

“Darling,” he said gently. “It’s okay. I can’t even imagine what this...I don’t know what this looks like for you. Hermione, is he okay?”    
  
“Would you be?” she replied darkly, bracing Harry beneath his arms.    
  
“No,” Draco-who-could-not-be-Draco sighed. “There’s no time, though. Ginny, I know you have questions. Can you help me get this one inside the vault? We’ll be safer there. Thank you, Bruggelk,” he added, nodding to the dwarf.    
  
“Of course,” he replied, bowing low. “Consider the debt owed to your family paid.”    
  


“Naturally,” not-Draco returned, heaving Owen’s unconscious form into his arms, which seemed weak and elastic. 

Ginny, seeming to take pity, hoisted him by the other arm and they half-dragged him the last few metres into the vault. Hermione guided Harry by the elbow until they were all inside. Behind him, Harry heard the vault door creak shut, either by magic or by the dwarf.    
  
“In a minute,” Draco said, his voice raspier and deeper now that Harry was close to him. “I’m going to revivify him and return all his memories. He’s going to be able to answer more questions than I am. But first...”    
  
Draco advanced on Harry, his face illuminated oddly by the sconces on the wall and more ashen than his first assessment had allowed. He proceeded to walk in a slow arc around Harry, checking him at every angle.    
  
“You’re alright,” he sighed, reaching out to Harry when he found his front again. Harry flinched and Draco’s hand fell to his side. “Yeah, that’s fair, I guess. May I?” 

He reached out again, and Harry let his sleeve be lifted. Draco pushed back his jumper sleeve until he could trace a freezing thumb over the razor-thin line that ran from elbow to wrist in a neat spiral. 

“I dreamed about this,” Draco murmured, as Harry stood tensely, waiting for Draco to release his arm. “Dunno why. It’s hardly important. Only I’m the only one who ever remembers  _ this  _ scar.”    
  
“Not an important one,” Harry whispered, fear finally taking hold and making his voice hoarse. Draco looked down at him sympathetically and released his hand. Draco looked right. He  _ smelled  _ right; like wood and cinnamon and warm things like hot rum. But the impossibility of the situation was proving more difficult to overcome than he’d thought it was going to, even with his extremely flexible way of thinking. 

  
“Do you remember that day?” Draco asked with a fond smile. “You, racing around to get boxes unpacked before the  _ entire  _ Weasley lot got there for your birthday lunch?”    
  
“Running around in my socks on the new hardwood,” Harry mumbled. 

“Slid straight down the last seven stairs, and instead of just  _ falling  _ like a normal idiot, hangs on to the railing the entire way,” Draco continued, looking at Hermione with a chuckle. “Took me the rest of that hour to clean up the blood.”    
  
“And I wouldn’t let you heal it,” Harry finished.    
  
“If it’s going to scar, let it,” Draco quoted. “I’m tired of everything being easy to fix.”    
  
Draco’s smile turned sad as he sat on a ledge in the vault that Harry only noticed once he was there.    
  
“This isn’t easy to fix,” he said in a voice suddenly full of emotion. “I really thought we were done with all of this.”    
  
“Draco, how is this even...I mean, you are...what is going on?”    
  
“It’s time, Draco,” Hermione said sympathetically. 

Nodding, Draco went down to lean into Traver’s face, reaching down to open his mouth and pour a vial of something dark and bubbling into his mouth. “Owen,” he mumbled. “ _ From dreams to waking, from loss to returning, from broken to mended. _ ”  __

A moment passed in the vault in such utter silence that Harry was sure the whole room could hear the steady pounding of his heart; he wanted with everything he had to freak out. His dead husband was standing in front of him, murmuring incantations and holding potions. His best friend and his ex-girlfriend were calmly looking on and just assuming that he was going to remain standing and not pass out. It was such complete and utter lunacy that Harry found himself able to hold on. Something,  _ a tiny little speck _ that lingered in the back of his mind, was screaming at him to flee. But. Considering that this situation only just hit his top five list of the weirdest things he’d ever experienced, Harry found he was rather relaxed. 

Even when, a moment later, Owen Travers leapt up, pulled a gun from his sock, and held it up in front of him for a moment, looking wildly around.    
  
“Oh,” he said after a beat. “Draco,” he lowered the gun and clicked open the side, withdrawing from it a thin, hawthorn wand and dropping the now useless metal to the ground. 

“Ms Granger,” he nodded. “I assume since you are both here, the plan worked?”    
  
“Relatively flawlessly,” Hermione confirmed. “Though, on rather a delayed timeline.” 

“What? Why?” Travers said, looking between the four of them wildly. “What’s the date?” 

“September 15th…”    
  
“Seven  _ months _ ?!” Travers bellowed, spinning around to look at Draco. “How long ago did you wake up!? You could have  _ died _ . I thought you said he was the  _ right  _ choice.”    
  
“I may, uh, have underestimated his grief,” Draco said apologetically.    
  
The three of them stood in a very tense standoff for a moment, until, unable to stand it any longer, cleared his throat in a very pointed way.    
  
“Would someone kindly tell me what the actual  _ fuck  _ is going on?” he asked, his tone clipped and dangerous again. “Are you actually alive, standing in front of me, and yammering on, Draco Malfoy? Because if you are,  _ I am going to fucking kill you _ .”    
  
Draco smiled a small wry smile. “Who had ‘threatening harm’ in the pool?”    
  
“Boarden, I believe.”    
  
“Shame,” Draco replied. “Hoped I’d get some galleons out of this at least. Okay, Harry. You’d better sit down.” 


	10. Chapter 10

** Seven months, Nineteen Days, Fifteen Hours Ago **

 

“You’re about to forget your cape,” Harry called from the kitchen. “Again.”  
  
Draco leapt down the stair into the sunken kitchen and found Harry at the table with a piece of toast shoved in his mouth. “Ha,” he declared. “Joke’s on _you_.” 

“Just because you’re already _wearing_ your cape today doesn’t change the fact that you’ve forgotten it two days in a row.”  
  
Draco chuckled, pouring himself a coffee and kissing Harry on top of the head. “Does too. I remembered all on my own! It’s like all past transgressions are—”  
  
Harry swatted at him gently. “Sod off. You’ll be late. Are you home for dinner today?” 

“Should be.”  
  
“Okay. Love you. Bye.”  
  
“Why are you rushing me? Got your boyfriend coming round?"  
  
“I’m _rushing_ you because in two weeks, I’ll be back at school in the mornings and I won’t be here to get your slow-arse out the door every day.”  
  
“Mornings,” Draco declared. “Are horrible. And you know it.”  
  
“Yeah, well you seem in a good enough mood today, so, get out of my face with your cheer.”  
  
“Love you, too.”  
  
Draco reached down and grabbed Harry’s hand. For some reason, he also pulled him out of the chair and kissed him deeply.  
  
Harry chuckled, pulling pack. “Thank you. What was that for?”  
  
“Dunno,” Draco said, releasing him and shrugging. “Gotta go. I’m going to be late!” 

He left Harry laughing and immediately regretted it the second he hit the front walk. He sighed.  
  
“Travers, what the fuck are you doing up against my gate? Are you _trying_ to get killed.” 

Travers may have been relatively calm to most people, but to Draco, who knew Pureblood masques better than most, he might as well have been wringing his hands and pacing. 

“We need to go over the plans one more time,” Travers declared as Draco approached. He nodded over Draco’s shoulder. “Has he suspected anything?”  
  
Draco’s gaze turned murderous. “Of _course_ he hasn’t suspected anything. We aren’t going over anything, either. You know the plan. You are supposed to be laying low so that the _plan_ isn’t utterly pointless because I’m trying to arrest my father for murder.”  
  
“He’s not going to _murder_ me. He needs me.”  
  
“Every time you open your mouth, it becomes even more obvious that you do not know my father. Does he still believe you’re a squib?”  
  
Travers sighed dramatically. “Unfortunately, he does. It’s exhausting. Who would have thought that going abroad for school would lead to me _not_ doing magic? I’m just glad my parents are both…” He looked up at Draco suddenly. “Sorry. That was an awful thing to say. I...are you sure you’re still willing to do this?”  
  
Draco’s expression must have been hard enough for Travers to get his answer. He held up his hands in surrender and offered a file to him at the same time.  
  
“Harry can’t know. We’re sure?”  
  
“Hermione insists that it will wreck the incantation. I think maybe it’s an overabundance of caution, but I understand where she’s coming from. Her entire career rests on this case.”  
  
Travers scoffed. “You’re willing to risk your life for her career?”  
  
Draco didn’t reply. He read through the file and handed it back with a nod. “Yes.”  
  
“Just yes? Have you thought about this from every—”  
  
“Travers. I owe these people far more than my life. So yes. Besides, I’m not at risk. Harry will figure it out.”  
  
“We have a funeral organised. Everything should be convincing. It should be enough to trigger the laws.”  
  
“It _will_ be. Stop worrying. The only thing you are supposed to be worrying about is the vault.”  
  
“It’s already ready. Serum and everything. I meant to warn you...the guy is using a new batch of poppies. He says you might dream.”   
  
Draco laughed harshly. “Dreams feel like the least of my worries.”  
  
After his little moment of Travers corralling, Draco’s day went relatively smoothly. In fact, at lunch, he owled Harry and convinced him to meet at the trattoria for dinner.

The expense was not a summer expense; the budgeting that Harry did was one of those ‘I grew up poor’ habits that Draco found equally exhausting and adorable. He generally went along with Harry’s insistence on a ‘summer budget’, while his school salary stopped. It wasn’t strictly _necessary_ since they owned their home, both made salary, and both had more money in the inheritance than a childless couple was going to need. 

Still. Today, Harry agreed. Since Draco knew that today was more important than he could ever explain to Harry, he took it as a win and ordered a semi-expensive merlot before Harry could arrive and admonish him. Half-way through their meal, though, Draco was face-to-face with a suspicious Harry Potter. Which had never gone well for him in the past.  
  
“Harry,” he said, in response to a facial expression that was about to ask him questions that he did not have answers to.  
  
“Draco?”  
  
“I’m sorry I’ve been working so much this summer.”  
  
“Draco, don’t be daft,” Harry laughed, deflating. “You’re job is important. You’re busy when you’re busy. I’m not, like, some Victorian housewife that needs entertaining. Have you been sat here all this time worrying I was mad at you? What is this, some sort of apology fancy meal?”  
  
“No, I just… I miss you, you know. I know you come home and stuff, but it always feels like we don’t see each other when you’re at work. And here I am, not home when you’re off. It’s stupid of me to waste the time.”  
  
Harry laughed again and reached across the table to pry Draco’s hand away from his wine glass. In an unusual display of public affection, he held the hand he released on top of the table. He didn’t say anything else to Draco’s sudden gushing, and since he was grateful, Draco didn’t push the topic further.  
  
“Hey, when we’re off summer budget, I think I may redo the office,” Draco said, as casually as he could.  
  
“Sure,” Harry replied. Draco was forever redoing rooms. This was hardly news.  
  
“There’s a lot of important shit in there, though. You should help me with this one.”  
  
“What kind of important shit?” Harry said with a grin.  
  
“Oh you know, just _every_ document that proves we exist. Our wills. Our marriage license. The deed to the house. You’re bank paperwork. My degree. Do you seriously not know this?” 

Harry shrugged so nonchalantly, that Draco felt the need to grit his teeth. “I mean, you’ve told me before. But, you handle the paper. It’s what you do.” 

  
“What about when I’m not here?”  
  
“Why? Where are you going?”  
  
“ _Harry,_  we both know I’m going to die first. Your Gryffindor lack of care is going to _kill_ me.”  
  
“Oh relax. I know where things are.”  
  
“I’m going to keep that desk. It’s...custom.”  
  
“Yes,” Harry grimaced. “I remember.”  
  
“Look, it’s not my fault if you can’t appreciate a design conversation with a renowned...no, wait. We aren’t having this fight again. It's more important that I remind you of the false bottoms. Do you remember the false bottoms to drawers."   
  
"Yes Draco, I remember. False bottoms. Please, go for it. Explain to me, what on earth do you need those for?”  
  
“I don’t know. It’s just standard wizarding practice. But the point is that those false bottoms have important stuff in them. Promise me you will retain that information, Harry.”  
  
But Harry may not have been listening. “What are you trying to hide?” he teased.  
  
“Nothing from you, idiot. That is why I am telling you they exist. Can you please tell me you heard that?”  
  
“Yes, yes, fine. Seriously. Who the hell did I marry?”  
  
“I love you,” Draco said, unable to stop himself.  
  
“I know?” Harry said, his worry returning. Draco cursed himself. “Draco, what aren’t you saying, my love.”  
  
“Nothing. Nothing at all. I just...thanks for putting up with me.”  
  
“You’re very lucky.”

* * *

Three days passed quickly. Draco did too much and too little, held Harry too tight and not long enough. He begged Harry’s sleeping form to hear him mutter words about the closet and the black box. Hermione’s memory had already been modified, fortunately not by him. There was no going back at this point. Hermione wouldn’t remember what she had agreed to until they wound up in Madam Malkins, and Harry wouldn’t wind up in Madam Malkins unless he followed the insane trail of breadcrumbs that had been laid before him. 

It was ludicrous. 

His _life_ was ludicrous. 

In the end, it all happened very fast. Travers showed up right on time, with Lucius in tow. Draco, having already taken the draught, had no trouble slowing his breath when the gunshot went off. He only barely heard Travers insist that he would deal with the body. 

He would have to hope that Travers took his own potion and followed the plan, hope that he didn’t have plans to give them all away. Since Voldemort had killed both his parents while he was away in America, Draco felt fairly certain that he wanted to round up Death Eaters as much as the Ministry. But he had to mostly hope. 

The darkness was immediately replaced with the dreams, and Draco wasn’t ready. 

* * *

“They were experimenting on Squibs,” Travers said to Harry, who looked so pale that he and Draco matched. Harry nodded as if he understood. “It was a whole underground organisation. The Ministry got a hold of it by accident. They followed the trail of my parents to New York. No one knew me here.”  
  
“You have an accent,” Ginny interjected. As usual, the brilliant ginger was the first with the important questions that didn’t matter at all. Draco chuckled. He’d long ago warned Travers that the youngest Weasley could be a problem here.  
  
“That’s true,” Travers grimaced. “Top marks. Grew up here. But I was ill. I didn’t spend much time outside. My parents were outcasts, dissenters in the first uprising. They fell out of society. No one really paid attention, and so no one even blinked when they sent me away to school at nine. It’s pretty easy to disappear from this world when no one cares about you at all.”  
  
Ginny had the decency to blush and nodded once.  
  
“The answer was to die?”  Harry replied robotically. 

“We tried other things first,” Draco whined. “I swear we did. We had a team on it for months. But we needed solid evidence of the syphon, Hare. We needed to prove it was _him._ ”

“I’m not quite getting how we ended up _here,_ Malfoy,” Harry growled.  
  
“Surname,” Hermione winced. “Surname is not a good sign.”  
  
“Yes, _thank you,_ Granger,” Draco hissed.  
  
“Oh, don’t worry. I’ll get to her,” Harry insisted, crossing his arms and looking back to Draco. “So, explain to me how I brought you back to life.”  
  
“Because, Harry, I was never really _dead._ ”

Harry, at these words, stood suddenly. He began to pace. He paled even more and started to shake. With little warning, he went to the far corner of the vault and vomited. He crouched down to the floor, his head in his hands. Draco, after years of practice worrying over Harry Potter at every minute of the day, couldn’t stop himself from rushing over and bracing Harry’s back. 

“I had a funeral, Draco. We had a _funeral_ for you,” Harry whispered. 

“I know,” Draco whispered back. “Harry, I am...I will spend the rest of my life apologising for this.” 

“Let’s start with the end of the story,” Harry replied, standing up and backing away. 


	11. Chapter 11

“I think I may be able to help with that,” a cool voice said from behind them.  

Harry, whose wand was in his hand despite his recent upset, spun around so fast that he made himself dizzy. That voice hid in his deepest memory; it’s frigid temperature said ‘you’ve lost me my servant’ frequently in his dreams as he was crushed beneath Voldemort’s feet. 

“Stop right there, Lucius,” Harry demanded, his voice dark and dangerous. 

Lucius, as usual, snickered. “You don’t tell me what to do.”    
  
“No,” Owen growled, his wand hitting Lucius’ neck as he snuck up behind the now open door, silently and deftly. It was so different from the bumbling near-Muggle he’d known twelve minutes ago that it made Harry swivel to Hermione. She seemed calm and collected, her usual self. It made his heart slow slightly. 

“You are such a  _ fool _ , Malfoy,” Owen hissed. “Underestimating your son, your son’s  _ Ministry _ . Having raised him in the way you did, you’d think you’d have stopped.”    
  
“Is this the point where I am to prostrate myself to you, apologise for the error of my ways?”    
  
“ _ Incarcerous _ ,” Draco yelled, his underused voice straining at the effort as the unnecessarily forceful spell vaulted into Lucius’ chest and held him tight, binding his mouth for added measure. Hermione, her wand similarly extended, sent the same spell at the door above Owen’s head. Two bodies hit the ground, one after the other.    
  
“Sorry, Mr Travers,” Draco said calmly. “I find myself rather desperate to get out of this dungeon and into the open air with my husband, who may in fact not make it back to the surface before passing out. I think that my  _ father’s _ paltry confessions can wait, don’t you?”    
  
“Indeed. Apologies.”    
  
Draco took a step forward, gripped Owen’s upper arm tightly. “You have absolutely nothing to apologise for. I need to extend my sincerest apologies to you. To your sister. We should have noticed sooner.”    
  
“I have a job offer waiting for you at the office,” Hermione said quietly. 

Travers nodded gravely. “My sister would have been very excited to see me at the Ministry. Her lack of powers never soured her. Magic isn’t everything.”    
  
Draco turned to look at Harry, whose face was still ghostly and waxen. He shook his head sadly. “I have never agreed with anything more,” he mourned.

* * *

Harry didn’t see what happened next. Ginny had taken one look at him as she moved to help him back to his feet, and had rushed to catch him before he fell. He assumed that someone had managed to either Apparate his unconscious body or put him on the train, because the next thing he was aware of, he was in his quarters. His bed was warm and his chin was buried beneath his blankets. The room around him was quiet and dark. He sat slowly, trying to work out how much truth existed in the dream-like scenarios that came rushing to his head. 

Moving on socked feet, he gingerly stepped into the outer room. As if to highlight the strangeness of the day, the first thing Harry’s eyes landed on were two owls, nested together on the large corner perch;  Adrastus and Faustus, normally mortal enemies, were asleep side-by-side in the scattered daylight. 

On the couch, mimicking them in an absurd way, sat Hermione, book in her hand, and Draco, his head in her lap as she read and stroked his hair. He was dozing and unguarded, relaxed and at ease, and oh so very much alive. He was paler than normal, the bones at his exposed wrists jutting out more than usual. He was skinny and full of new shadows, but he was also breathing. Harry’s hands went involuntarily to his face, the inhale he took now far closer to a gasp than a breath.    
  
Hermione turned, tapped Draco’s shoulder when she saw him. Stood as Draco stirred and sat up, looking both sleepy and sad.    
  
“I’ll be downstairs. Don’t hurt each other,” Hermione whispered, leaving her book on the end table and quietly shutting the door behind her. 

Neither Draco nor Harry moved. Draco stared at the fire while Harry stared at the back of his head. Finally, Harry decided he needed to move. He turned through the whole room, taking a large loop to come and sit beside Draco, a gap between them that might as well have been a mile. 

He cleared his throat. “Can you believe that?” he breathed, gesturing to the owls.    
  
The smile on Draco’s mouth was faint, full of fear. Harry couldn’t stop his arm from moving to his face. He touched his hair, first. Feather-light and soft, if a bit overgrown. He pulled a chunk between his fingers, running his hand back and down Draco’s scalp. The scar from when he’d fallen from his first child broom was there, hitting Harry’s baby finger as he smoothed down the strands by Draco’s neck. He had turned into Harry’s touch, facing him fully now, but his arms lay stock-still in his lap, his back straight and stiff as he waited for Harry’s decision. 

Harry wasn’t done, though, wasn’t ready to speak the words that hadn’t yet formed in his mind. Reaching Draco’s neck, he let that hand fall. Instead, he let his left hand pick up Draco’s arm, pushing the sleeve of his borrowed henley up his forearm so he could find the mole by his elbow, let his palm rest over the small bump. Draco stayed pliable as Harry’s right hand moved down to pick up the hand where Draco’s wedding ring still rested. Harry pulled it off, gently, easily on the too-thin finger, and slid his own off too. He pushed them together until they gave a dense click and the interlocking rings slipped into one. 

“Harry,” Draco whispered. “It’s me. I promise it’s me.”    
  
“It can’t be you,” Harry said, hearing the robotic anger in his tone and doing nothing to restrain it. “My husband is dead. I know this because he died in the line of duty. Because his work sent the file to my house and told me that I was going to get the insurance policy every Auror is meant to have. I know this because we had a funeral and I sold our house because it hurt too much to be there.”    
  
“Harry—”    
  
“I know that because Draco Malfoy, my  _ husband _ , knows me better than anyone. He knows that I, of all people, would not be able to handle losing anyone else.” 

“I know that, and Harry, if you need me to go if you need me to—”    
  
“I know that my husband, the man who took years to let me in but then never again kept  _ anything  _ from me...that man, he would have found a way to leave a clue, leave a sign so that I could save him. That man would not have made me wait nearly  _ eight months  _ to find out it was all a ploy to get a case.”    
  
“A complicated case, Harry. My father was determined to have me killed. He needed me out of the way to complete his plan. He was making...I think the Muggles call them  _ sleeper cells _ . Training Squibs. Just to have me killed. He wanted to take back the Ministry, put Purebloods in charge.”    
  
“Draco Malfoy, love of my life, he knew me well enough to know that I could have kept his secret,” Harry hissed, standing now. “Can you explain that one away? Why couldn’t he trust me?”    
  
Draco looked at the floor. A tear streaked his face. He took a moment, then stood.    
  
“I’ll go,” he declared. “I can’t see you this hurt. I’ll come back when you need me. But Harry? It was just fear. I’m a coward. We know this about me. I couldn’t take the risk that someone would find out that you knew. Torture you. Kill you. I could stay dead, that didn’t bother me. If the spell ran out, I just stayed down in the vault, no one got hurt. But you? I knew you’d be...sad. Don’t get me wrong. I am...flattered by your grief. But you sad was better, in my feeble mind, than you dead too.” 

Draco smoothed himself down unnecessarily and took a step forward. The speech flowed through Harry and barely touched the grief. He was hurt and confused and a thousand other, undefined emotions with no names. The words weren’t available to him. 

But that motion, the smoothing of unwrinkled pants, the tugging of the shirt hem. They were so very  _ Draco _ and they pushed Harry forward. He reached the door first, his actions intentional and not hindered by the weight of hesitation as Draco was.    
  
He reached out and put a palm on Draco’s chest, stopping him and then pressing further. “Don’t leave. Don’t leave again.”    
  
Draco took one more step and Harry let it go. He rushed into his chest, embraced him with six months, fifteen days, and four hours worth of hurt and fear and loneliness. It wasn’t enough. Draco’s legs fell beneath him, and Harry fell too. They ended up on their knees on the floor, clinging to each other’s clothes and skin and hair. Lips never touched, words didn’t fall, and Harry held on as though Draco may melt to dust beneath his hands.  As hard as he could, Draco pushed thoughts into Harry’s chest. He screamed internally, pounded the floor in anger.  _ Never again, _ he begged of a god he did not believe in.  _ Never again will I leave this man alone. Don’t let go. Don’t let him let me go, please _ .


	12. Chapter 12

It was a half-hour before Hermione returned. She knocked so lightly that Draco only just heard it from where he was sat on the floor, Harry's head still in his lap, his hair in his fingers trying to soothe a hurt that would likely never be healed. At least he'd stopped crying. The tears drying had hurt for a moment, replaced with a silent, suffering breath that Draco could feel beneath his hand. 

"I'm sorry," Hermione said gently. "We've waited as long as we can. Professor McGonagall has cleared a classroom for us to use. You need to fill them in before I am forced to release  _ him  _ for a lack of a charge _."  _

Draco nodded and gently touched Harry's shoulder. It was the first time he'd touched him outside of the hair smoothing in at least 20 minutes and he jolted at the touch. He stood up like he’d been shocked, smoothed out his shirt and nodded. 

“You’ll need to let me change,” Harry grunted, his voice hoarse from emotion and lack of use, and Draco nodded, granting permission that had neither been needed nor requested.

Harry stalked away and Hermione told Draco to go down. She was right, that it was best that she wait for Harry and not the other way around, but he hesitated a moment before she pushed him out the door. 

“It’s not going to solve anything if you start  _ worrying  _ all over him. He hates being cared for. Go.”    
  
He nodded again and left. 

A few moments later, gathered around a conference-style table that certainly had not been there before, Draco realised that the room full of people were all waiting for him to speak. He stood up, smoothed out his jumper, and turned to find them all staring at him; Mcogonnagall already looked angry, Owen Travers seemed disinterested, Ginny and Hermione both seemed hurt and puzzled in equal measure, and his commanding officer, Peak, looked eager to have an arrest warrant processed.    
  
Harry, for his part, just looked tired. 

“The things we discuss in this room cannot leave these walls. Not everything I am about to describe is strictly... Legal. It was all authorized, of course, but. If we are to put my father where he belongs…”

“Relax, Draco. No one is going to say anything.”    


“I want you to understand, though. I  _ knew  _ the risks. Going in, I knew what I was going to do. I knew how... I knew how it could end and I did it anyway. I just... I think Harry needed to hear me say that.”   
  
Harry—who was, to his credit, sitting quietly at the table and not meeting anyone’s eye—nodded just slightly. Draco took a deep breath and began to pace.  

“Three years ago, I was redoing our office on the main floor—” 

“Shocker,” Ginny interrupted. “Draco Malfoy.  _ Redecorating _ .” 

They all turned to glare at her. She raised her hands in defence and looked at the table. “Sorry. I'm a little tense. You know how sassy I get when I'm on edge.” 

Draco cleared his throat and continued his back and forth at the head of the table. “I wanted a desk made one with very specific qualities. I had one growing up, but it was sold after the war to keep the family appearances intact. That was fine, though, because I knew I could add everything I wanted if I had it custom made” He paused here, lowered his head and sighed. "The problem, I needed to go to the original craftsman."

Owen put his hands on the table a little harder than was necessary. “Draco just get on with it. This story is already starting to get a little Scooby-Doo.” 

Silence in the room made Owen chuckle. “What, you don't have Scooby-Doo? God. If we all get out of this room as friends we are having a Marathon because that's just sad.”

“It was a sunny day."

He had no idea why, but for as long as Draco remained alive, he would remember that the day was not sinister, ominous, or foreboding. It felt important, now, when so many details didn't. 

* * *

Three Years Earlier 

The street was not as he'd remembered it. Truthfully, he was shocked at the inaccuracy of his original memory. Sure, he'd been no more than a child the last time he'd walked there particular cobbles. Since then, he'd fought dark magic, nearly killed a man. Since then he'd survived a war, gotten married, started a new career, abandoned his family to forge a new one, and lost most of his possessions. 

But it still surprised him that his created memory of this place was so blatantly  _ wrong _ . 

There were no flower boxes on the windows. There weren't multicoloured awnings. There were no signs of life at all, really, and if you weren't already looking, it was likely that you'd pass the whole street by. It certainly didn't look like the place where you'd commission furniture. 

Somehow, however, he'd ended up finding the place without any help from his parents. The key factor ended up being a photo of the desk in question that had appeared in an old 'before you get on the train' album his mother had made and tossed in the bottom of his school trunk every year. He’d hated that album; the frozen, staged images of a Happy Family that ended up needing to be desperately hidden in the bottom of his trunk for an entire term until he could hide it at Christmas. In the end, it was one of these photos, though, that reminded Draco of the desk and the false bottoms and that led him to the alleys of Yatton Kennell and the Church Farm market that didn’t exist if you were a Muggle. 

Life, as they say, is funny. 

In retrospect, Draco  _ would  _ end up considering that the relative ease with which he found Mirton Slabbinck should have given him pause. It had his father’s signature all over it, to instantly find the ancient and withered old craftsman who excitedly drew up and planned the perfect large banker’s desk with its many hiding places. It took three months. In the weeks before the plan had finally come to a head, those three months were what ate at him; who knew how many lives he had impacted by not finding it for three months. 

The day of delivery, however—when the desk was hauled by hand to avoid disturbing the wards with levitation spells into the office—was the day that Owen Travers showed up. Carrying one end of the desk, bruised and barely able to walk, but carrying the desk with a girl who could not have been older than twenty. Even someone who  _ hadn’t  _ lived through abuse before turning into a trained law officer would have recognised the signs. 

Under the pretence of checking the work, Draco bent close to the wood as Travers pushed it to the middle of the floor. “Tap once if you need help,” he’d murmured. Travers’ eyes flashed to the girl. He tapped the desk once. Draco nodded and convinced the two of them, and Slabbinck, to stay for tea. As they left, Travers had pushed a note into Draco’s hand, scribbled hastily on provided materials left in the bathroom for him. 

_ Squibs. Death Eaters. Conditioning them for battle. Can’t explain more until safe. Help my sister.  _

Draco immediately put a task force together, had Travers and the girl, who was not his sister, out of Slabbinck’s prison of employment by the week’s end. Had that been the end of the case, he would have been lauded and praised, high commendation for deterring a train of human trafficking. 

It wasn’t, of course.

The story Travers gave them when they had him in custody was wild, almost laughable, yet utterly corroborated by Amelia, the girl whose squib brother was also being held by a supposed ring of ex-Death Eaters. According to both of them, a team of lower lackies, one’s who had never received trials because of a lack of proof of their connection to Voldemort, had hatched a scheme to use Squibs, whose magic was nearly undetectable, to stage a mass breakout from Azkaban and stage a new battle to take over the Ministry. It was harebrained and foolhardy, full of so many holes that Draco had to bite back a smirk till the last half of the conversation. The part of the conversation that had brought them so far down the rabbit hole that Draco wasn’t sure he was  _ yet  _ seeing the sky.

“That’s not the real plan, of course,” Owen had finished as Amelia wound down. 

“Sorry,” Draco had interjected as she nodded along.    
  
“Well, no,” Owen had said firmly, his head tilted toward Draco, fixing him with a calculating stare. “Does it  _ sound  _ like a plan that will work?”    
  
“I mean—”    
  
“Exactly. It’s a smokescreen.”    
  
“A smokescreen for what?” Draco had insisted, starting to lose his patience.  

“For Lucius’ Malfoy’s bid to reinstate the Sacred Council.” 

* * *

  
Even now, at the table in Hogwarts, telling this part of the story forced all the blood from Draco’s face. He sat heavily and let his head fall into his hands. 

Hermione cleared her throat and reached out a hand, placing it gently on Draco’s arm until he looked up. “I can take it from here. For a bit. If you want?”    
  
Draco nodded. 

Hermione calmly sat up straighter. “The Sacred Council?” she began. “Are we all...beginning on the same page?”    
  
Ginny looked around them, making sure she caught Harry’s eye before timidly joking, “Hermione, let’s just all assume that we haven’t all read  _ every  _ magical history book and get a quick refresher.”    
  
Hermione gave her a weak smile that didn’t reach her eyes and nodded solemnly. 

“In the early 12th century, there was no formal government. Obviously. I mean, even the rest of England still functioned largely on religious feudalism and fiefdoms, not to mention that there was so much migration and pilgrimage that —-”   
  
“Hermione,” Draco muttered.    
  
“Right. Sorry. Okay, point is, at the time, Magic was hidden from the deeply superstitious Muggles. The schools had been established, there were hidden communities behind wards and masks, but they were all run independently. That was the start of the  _ blood  _ crap. People were so fixated on keeping Magic in Magic families for the safety of the secret." 

"Sure, that was the history book line," Draco said darkly. "I grew up in a world where the real reason for the Council was as simple as even Voldemort made it seem." 

"Muggle wizards can't take over if there are no Muggle wizards," Owen finished quietly. 

The table was silent. They had  _ all  _ walked down this road once before. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I PROMISE we are almost at answers. I'm not trying to drag this out, I swear. I just figure giving you some is better than none. SORRY!


End file.
